Whether The Metaverse Is Going to Be a Good Thing

Facebook changed its name to Meta, and three weeks ago Zuckerberg and company released a video explaining the ‘Metaverse’ they are working to create. The comments are turned off, and YouTube won’t let us see how many likes and dislikes Meta’s video viewed 3.3 million times thus far has.

This gets right at my whole concern here. I could hardly ask for a clearer illustration of the potential for manipulating our view of reality which these Big Tech companies are only all the more capable of perpetrating in the next phase of the Internet Age.

And this is why I am not so sure the Metaverse is going to be a net good for us.

As a funny aside, check out Iceland’s parody of the Metaverse announcement video here. With “water that’s wet,” it’s worth a watch.

At a bare minimum, though, we should consider the ramifications of engaging with what is coming down the pike here.

Big Tech should not get to run the whole shebang, but they may. We need a less centralized – and more human – way of interacting in the future, but we may not get it online.

Hopefully we can hold onto actual reality in the midst of ever more convincing virtual and augmented realities.

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